When the ship comes in
by jconeg
Summary: Carter is back from Africa and Abby spots him at an AA meeting.He tells her on the phone that he did something stupid, and she asksto meet him.
1. Before the hurricane begins

Category: Carby  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Spoilers: takes place after 10.2 "The lost"...but no accurate   
spoilers for episodes after that. Just my imagination.  
  
Summary: Carter stays in Africa after saving Luka, and Abby is having  
a hard time to deal with his absence. At an AA meeting,  
she can't get him out of her mind. Some weird feelings  
tell her he is not that far.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own anybody, or anything...I'm just a poor girl...  
  
Feedback: would be appreciated...use jconeg@yahoo.fr or the review link.  
  
Author's note: The title of the fic and of each chapter is from the song  
"When the ship comes in" by Bob Dylan. It's just about  
hurricanes and butterflies, and if you saw "Chaos Theory"  
you can understand it's Carby...  
  
Chapter 1  
  
Before the hurricane begins  
  
---------------------------  
  
  
What was this with this smell ? Whether she went to St Michael, Mercy or whatever AA meetings that existed in Chicago - and she could have bet her soul it was the same all over the States - it was always the same smell: a mixed crappy coffee, cold tobacco, and overwhelming perfumes. She could understand the coffee and cigarette scents, both were compulsory in order to stand these meetings, but over all those years of assisted sobriety, she never figured out why the scent was so strong. She had heard of drunks who needed alcohol so badly that they ended up drinking Chanel #5 when there was no more beer in the fridge. But that was definitely beyond her means. That thought brought a light smile to her face, but it faded away as fast as it had come when the thought that Carter could have afforded it grew in her mind. She could have understood that smell at the former place where she used to go, with mainly persons with a drinking problem, but not here, not at St Michael. Eighty percent of the people attending this meeting were junkies. Why would they drink their cologne ? So she guessed, it must have been on their skin, on their clothes...Why the hell did they smell so strong ?   
  
With all the rules already established in these groups, they could at least have added this one: the name of a mandatory scent to wear. This one or nothing, and that would have been it ! And with a strict control at the entrance of the room. Someone smelling your neck to check whether or not you had failed the fragrance rule ! She knew it sounded ridiculous but she could have accepted anything that could avoid this nauseating mix of scents.  
  
But this morning something was different. Among all those scents, there was one that felt comforting, that made her feel okay, feel like home. She couldn't really point out what it was, but she knew that for the first time in a long time, she was happy to be here.   
  
She didn't really know why she had switched to St Michael for her meetings. Maybe it was all about her new life, back to med school, new appartment, a large bunch of new furniture and clothes, new love life - which could have been expressed as "absent love life" -, new meetings. It all made sense. Just one thing bothered her here at St Michael. People kept changing. It seemed that junkies didn't attend these meetings very long. The faces she saw the most regularly belonged to alcoholics. She knew it because of their speeches. She knew it because after nearly 7 years of this routine, she had learned to recognize who was like her and who was like him, John. Wooof... Once again, the thought of him had just passed through her mind without letting any mark. He had disappeared as fast as he had appeared.   
  
Among all the unimportant questions going through her mind this morning - she had even tried to remember the recipe she once got to make a good carrot-cheese cake, anything that would keep her mind away from this lady speaking on the stage, who kept babbling that her son had got her into that hell - she wondered why it was that alcoholics kept going to meetings for years while junkies seemed to disappear after a few months. Did they all relapse and overdose that fast ? Or were they all okay just after a few meetings and only needed to come for a year.  
  
It seemed it was this way for Carter. Maybe junkies were the lucky ones. If they really wanted to get away from drugs, they just had to stay away from certain people. But for alcohol it was another matter. It was impossible not to meet anybody who would offer you a drink or draw you to a bar. So that was her excuse. And it was the reason why she kept attending those meetings. But she also knew it was a lame excuse. Carter lived among pills, pushed narcotics into patients' veins everyday, and he didn't seem to mind. She had practically been living with him for over a year, and he hadn't attended one meeting, she was almost certain about it.   
  
"Oh god" Abby thought "get off of me Carter !" She instantly turned her attention back to the lady on the stage.  
  
"and it was then that he made me take this crap, after twenty-two years of pure love to my son, he made me do it. And I will never forgive him for what he did..."  
  
How long had she been going this way ? More than half an hour, that was for sure. Geez...was she boring ! The only thing that prevented Abby from standing up and leaving the room was that she wanted to know what this lady's son actually did to make this woman that frantic and incoherent.   
  
She knew the routine by heart now. For each thought about Carter that entered her mind through one ear, she had found a way to blow it away through the other ear... And so after ten weeks of this exercise, she knew exactly how to cast Carter away from her mind. For drunks and addicts, they called it "diversion meetings". Here, she had found a way to transform Carter into wind. Wooof... for one Carter thought, there were a thousand possible diverting thoughts to push him away. Well, Abby knew she could have found better than this annoying lady, but it seemed harder today to transform John into wind. He seemed to be resisting harder than usual, to find a way to stay a little bit longer than a simple breath in her brain. Maybe she just had to watch more closely to her ears hygienic status. Once again the idea made her smile.   
  
It was that smell. This smell was intoxicating because she wanted to name it. It was bothering because it made her feel good without any obvious reason. Abby knew deep down that it was that smell that made John be more than a simple breeze this morning. This smell reminded her of a warm bed, the sound of someone taking a shower next to her room, and the smell of warm coffee in the background. It reminded her of the sound of a Jeep engine, and of Kristen Hersh's voice.   
  
"Oh my god, I miss you John" Abby couldn't figure out whether she had said it loud or kept it to her. And that lady on the stage kept going.   
  
"I trusted him, he was to become someone, and he blew it !" Go to the point, please, go to the point, Abby was pleading the lady with all her mind to stop beating around the bush with her damn son. And she was pretty sure that the lady had said "Hello, I'm Carol and I'm an heroin-addict" when she had begun her speech. Now she sounded like it was her son the addict. "Oh that junkie could just go to hell" Abby thought as she began examining all the other persons in the audience. If that lady hadn't finished with her son in the next five minutes, Abby would be out of it...  
  
Right next to her was a fat man, around fifty, who had eaten 3 packs of twinkies since the beginning of the meeting, and still had a large part of them stuck in his mustache. Maybe he just saved that for later. If it wasn't for the twinkies, Abby would definitely have put him in the "drunk" category, but she wasn't sure...maybe just a twinkies-addict. The woman two seats on her left was to be put in the "junkie" category. Her hands were shaking and she was so thin that she almost seemed transparent.   
  
All of a sudden, Abby wondered when she had started to make a difference between them. It didn't make any sense. She knew that the thin woman could as well have been an alcoholic and would have looked exactly the same. When she had attended her first meetings, she didn't see any difference. It was all the same problem. The speeches were basically the same, the stories all so pathetic, and the lives equally screwed up. Was it when Carter had joined the fun of it all that she had started considering the two categories ? Was it when she had been his sponsor and realized that she couldn't get to him the way she wanted to ?   
  
Actually, she knew exactly when she had started with this game of "who's what" at each meeting. It was just a few months ago. It was a day she'd been to a meeting and been totally absorbed by the story of a guy who was an everything-you-can -imagine-addict. He had tasted and named it all, crack, heroin, demerol, LSD, morphin, and was now proud of being only on "green tobacco and oreo cookies-addict". The guy seemed to make fun of it all, and even though she knew she was supposed to feel sick at this guy's speech, she had found the all story rather funny. She had been in an even lighter mood when she had come home that night to find Carter at her place and a little dinner all set up for them. It wasn't exactly a candle-light- romantic-dinner. Just fish and chips, and Carter wasn't exactly dressed up for the event. Hair all messy, partially torn T-Shirt and plain jogging pants, bare feet. A simple evening like they had a hundred of, eating their dinner on the couch watching TV. And all of a sudden, remembering the guy at the meeting before, she had out of nowhere asked this stupid question: "John, have you ever considered taking hard stuffs ?" At first, he had just gulped and looked at her bewildered. "You know, heroin, crack..." she had insisted. And he had just opened his mouth, looked confused, and nothing had come out. He had leant his head back to his plate, stabbed a piece of fish with his fork and brought it to his mouth, with his eyes stuck on the TV. And he hadn't looked at her for the next fifteen minutes. The silence was only broken when he had made a smart comment on the show on TV, and that was it about this question.  
  
Abby never had her answer. And the way he had reacted, she couldn't tell whether he had "considered" going to real illegal drugs, or if he had actually done it. She knew that if he had, it could only have been a one-time thing. He couldn't have kept on working efficiently or managed as well as he had to keep a facade of normal behavior if he had been a real junkie. But he was a real addict, Abby thought. And what did she know really about drug addiction ?   
  
Did it really make a big difference whether it was stuff he could find at the hospital or on the street ? The thought made her shiver. She couldn't picture him facing a drug dealer. He could have afforded it though...and she knew he had taken cocain. Only once, but he had. He had confessed it on one of the rare times when he had spoken on the stage at an AA meeting she had attended. She still didn't know how he had gotten his hand on that junk. She wanted to believe it was possible that he had just found it at the hospital among the personal belongings of a patient. Any other possibilities made her sick to her stomach. At the meeting, he had just admitted that he hadn't slept for weeks, had a rough shift and couldn't afford to fall asleep on duty. So she had figured that he had found the cocain at the hospital and taken it right away. And deep down, she couldn't understand why his admission had bothered her so much. Cocain wasn't any worse than the stuff he had injected.   
  
But after the "incident" at home and her very tactful question about the "hard stuff", she had begun to classify people. "Drunk" or "junkie". Real junkie or "prescribed" one. She had created this last category for Carter only. In all the meetings she had attended, he was the only one to enter this category. She knew he wasn't the only one on Earth, but he was the only one she knew. And she also knew that the cocain incident and his absence of answer on the other drugs were what was bothering her the most, because that would put him in the real junkie category, and she couldn't admit it. She was aware of the fact that Carter didn't make that distinction and considered himself as an addict, period.   
  
Well, he had considered himself as an addict... But for the past year, since they've been together, he was just a very sober clean guy, and if she had just met him at that time, she didn't think she could have guessed about his past. As far as she knew, he didn't attend any meeting over this year. And she didn't remember any time when the word "addict" came out of his mouth. It had been only three years, and he seemed totally out of danger on this side. While she was still fighting her drinking problem seven years after it all started... It didn't seem fair.   
  
"What the hell ? Carter, get out of my mind !!" Abby now knew she hadn't said it loud, but she had however slapped the side of her head with her palm. Why couldn't he let her alone this morning. The more she was trying to get him out of her mind, the more he seemed to be willing to come back.  
  
She had created a very diversified group of distractions to get him out of her mind as soon as he had turned his back on her and left her to go back to Africa to claim for Luka's body. By the time Luka had come back alive, this group had been elevated to a pretty big wall, and when she had read the letter he had written to explain why he was staying in Congo, it had already become an unbreakable castle. Carter was out of her system, and when he dared approach her, she was able to push him away with just a little snap. Carter was just a tiny blow of wind to her ears.   
  
She just couldn't figure why this morning he seemed more like a hurricane preparing in her head. Aside from that delightful smell, there was no reason to think of him this morning more than any others. Carter was miles away from her, and yet he still seemed to rush in uncontrollable waves in her brain.  
  
Abby got back to her examining the audience, very firm in not letting anyone bothering her in the process. The guy next to her had just finished his fourth pack of twinkies. Two rows right in front of her, a guy was doing some crosswords. Carter used to do crosswords too at AA meetings, but she didn't let this thought in her head more than a split second, and was very proud of it. In the all audience, she could count 5 persons doing crosswords. Didn't the lady on the stage notice that ? Couldn't she see she was annoying every single person in the room ? The guy with the crosswords two row right before Abby must have been around his thirties. She couldn't tell much about him for he hadn't lifted his head from his newspaper for ages, nor turned his head in the slightest way. His hair was brown, exactly the same color as John's...  
  
"Oh shit" Abby thought "not again... Carter, I told you, out of here !"  
  
He couldn't be John. His hair was way too long, and he seems thinner than Carter. He was only wearing a thin blue T-Shirt, and the way he was leaning over his crosswords, Abby could see his ribs through the fabric of his T-shirt. She laughed slightly at the view of his hair, which was really a mess.   
  
As if he had heard her, the blue T-shirt guy started scratching the back of his head. Abby froze up instantly. The big wall she had built up to protect herself from Carter was suddenly broken down to pieces. A hurricane couldn't have done a better job.  
  
But actually, it was really nothing, not even a little breeze... just the way he had scratched his hair with his left hand, and the way the watch band on his wrist was turned on the wrong side...   
  
To be continued... 


	2. When the winds will stop

Category: Carby  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Spoilers: takes place after 10.2 "The lost"...but no accurate   
spoilers for episodes after that. Just my imagination.  
  
Summary: Carter stays in Africa after saving Luka, and Abby is having  
a hard time to deal with his absence. At an AA meeting,  
she can't get him out of her mind. Some weird feelings  
tell her he is not that far.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own anybody, or anything...I'm just a poor girl...  
  
Feedback: would be appreciated...use jconeg@yahoo.fr or the review link.  
  
Author's note: The title of the fic and of each chapter is from the song  
"When the ship comes in" by Bob Dylan. It's just about  
hurricanes and butterflies, and if you saw "Chaos Theory"  
you can understand it's Carby...  
  
  
  
Previously...: Abby saw a man at an AA meeting who really looked like  
Carter. But it couldn't be him...Carter was miles away  
in the Congo...  
  
  
  
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter 2  
  
Oh the time will come up when the winds will stop... ----------------------------------------------------  
  
There were two options. First, wait the end of the meeting, and face him. Second, leave right away, without even being sure that it was him, and never come back to this place !  
  
If it was him, and she was pretty sure it was him - how many addicts in Chicago had exactly that color of hair, wore their watch in this ridiculous way, and had this exact scent ? - then she was mad at him and didn't want to talk to him. If it wasn't him, she had decided 6 minutes ago to leave the meeting within 5 minutes if Mrs.I'm-an-addict-but-blame-it-on-my-son hadn't found a good conclusion to her now 45 minutes talk. So that was it.   
  
Abby stood up. She made her way between the seats and Mr. Twinkies quite easily without any noise and went straight away to the back door. She didn't even turn back to check whether some people in the audience had noticed her departure, and first of all, she didn't want the blue T-shirt guy to turn and see her leave.   
  
Once outside, her first feeling was anger. She was mad at him. She remembered she was supposed to be very mad at him. But she couldn't really manage to be that mad. She felt delighted. She had missed him and wanted him to come back so badly... but she couldn't admit it, it would have destroyed her.   
  
And now she began walking towards the El station without really understanding what had just happened. Ten weeks of anger could just be swept away by his mere presence ? That's all he had to do, be here and everyhting would be fine ? No way... he had to talk to her, to explain her, to apologize, she wasn't going to be an easy prey. But then a dark shadow came to her mind. What if he didn't even consider going back to her. His being back in Chicago didn't mean them going back to where they were before... before what ?   
  
If she could pick up a moment where she wanted to be back... Well, she was clueless. She wouldn't choose the time right before Carter's departure for Africa. She wouldn't even choose the week before his Grandmother's death. When was it that it was really perfect ? She had to go far back... before he tried to propose to her, before she started back drinking heavily because of Eric's disappearance... And the more she was searching for the time where she wanted their relationship to come back to, the more she could sense how painful it was to think about it.   
  
Because it was never perfect.  
  
It had started way too fast, on an impulse, because they just couldn't wait anymore. They had been building it up slowly, so slowly, out of friendship and of parallel backgrounds. She had first thought that the monkey pox had been a blessing. Now she saw it as the enemy. It had forced them into something they were not really ready for. They both thought they were ready, it had been so long and so slow a road to it. They could only be ready, couldn't they ?  
  
But they were not. There were still too many unanswered questions, too many hidden facts. And they had failed...both of them, on their own and together.  
  
Now that she had found a sit in the El train, Abby couldn't feel this first wave of joy anymore. Nothing was fixed because he was back. She wanted to cry. A lump was beginning to form down her throat. And she was beginning to get very worried. For them, for their future.  
  
And for him.  
  
What was he doing back here without having told anyone ? The last news she had from him were from Luka who had kept a weekly phone contact with John at Kisangani since he had come back from the Congo. After each call, Luka would gratify the all staff of the ER by a "and by the way, Carter says hello !" Abby resented Luka for doing so every week. If he had come with something new, well, maybe she could have accepted it. But it was nearly always the same phrase, which meant nothing to her except that John was away... Maybe Luka just did it to remind everybody that Carter wasn't gone for good, and it was his weekly tribute to the man who had saved his life. So at last news, 4 days ago, John was still working in a hospital in Kisangani.  
  
How come he was now in Chicago ? and at a NA/AA meeting ?  
  
She was beginning to doubt it was really him. She didn't want it to be him...Her heart was beginning to beat faster and faster as the only possible explanation became clear to her mind...if it was really him.   
  
"Oh please, let it not be John. It couldn't be him..."   
  
She entered her appartment and immediatly fell on her couch. Five minutes later, she was still out of breath and her heart hadn't slowed down. She noticed the red light on her answering machine and instinctively reached out to the machine.  
  
Beep.  
  
"Abby... "  
  
The voice was shaky and sounded more like a whisper than a male voice, but she could have recognized the vibrations in it among a million of other voices. Nobody had ever said her name this way.  
  
The voice in the machine tried to clear itself and a less raspy tone went on.  
  
"Abby, it's me...John. Uh... I wanted to let you know that uh... I'm now in Chicago and i'm going to be at the 8 o'clock meeting at St Michael, so if you don't want to see me, you'd better not get there..."  
  
a confused weak laugh followed.  
  
"... uh not that I mean that I expect you to go to this sort of place but... well... uh ... ... uh, Abby, I did something stupid, something really stupid."  
  
And that was it. He must have made this call this morning, Abby thought. She had a night shift and had just gone directly from the hospital to the meeting. No way she could have been here to answer. Now, she knew for sure it was him. And among the three feelings she had on her way back home from the meeting, anger, joy and fear, the last one was now the only one.  
  
What stupid thing could he have done, that made him come back to Chicago ? to a NA meeting in Chicago ? She had to see him right away, to ask him. She took a look at her watch. 9:15am. The meeting was over, or almost. Unless that lady had kept babbling and nobody had dared to stop her. But even if she made it very fast, she couldn't be back to St Michael before 9:40. And the meeting would definitely be over by that time. She opened a drawer to find her note-book and read John's phone numbers, at his place and his grandparents' mansion. She knew them both by heart, as well as his cell phone number. But she had to check, just to see whether there were some hidden meanings beyond these numbers, if one of them was the one she had to dial first. Where was he ? She had no idea whether or not he had kept on renting the same place these last two months. Or kept on using the same cell phone.  
  
With shaking fingers, she dialed the cell phone number. No luck, this number didn't belong to anyone anymore. His place then... She heard the phone ring four times, and she couldn't decide whether she was pleading him to pick up, or to keep silent. Because she was scared. She was scared to death...  
  
"hello..."  
  
Her heart jumped in her chest, it was a woman voice.   
  
"Can I help you ?"  
  
"uh...Is Dr...uh.. could I speak to John Carter please ?"  
  
"who ?"  
  
"John Carter... he used to live here"  
  
"Well, apparently he doesn't anymore. I've been living here for exactly four months." a sweet unknown voice answered.  
  
"Ok, well, I'm sorry then."  
  
The mansion, that was the only option left. But wait, she had said four months... Carter had been gone for ten weeks now. That was nearly three months. And he had left for Africa the first time about 4 weeks before that. So, fourteen weeks all in all, that didn't make four months... Abby grabbed the phone again.  
  
"Hello, I'm sorry to bother you again, but may I know exactly when you did move in ?"  
  
"what ? uh...wait... on June 10th." the cheerful lady answered.  
  
June 10th. Carter had left his appartment before June 10th... Abby didn't know that. His grandmother had died on June 2nd, and the funerals took place 3 days later. It was a thursday, she was sure of it. Why had he left his place that soon afterwards ? She had hardly talked to him in the week that had followed his grandmother's death. She knew he had been sleeping at the Carters mansion during this week, but she had no clue on the fact that he had moved there for good... Something was wrong...something was really wrong with him.  
  
She had to find out, to talk to him right away. She felt like his life was at stake, and she was the one able to help him. She was now confident. No more shaking hands. She stared at her hands for a few seconds. She wanted them to become healing hands...for him.  
  
With firm steady fingers, she dialed the Carters mansion phone number.  
  
Somebody picked up almost instantly.  
  
"Hello ?"   
  
"Hello, hi, this is Abby Lockhart. Is Dr. Carter here ? may I speak to him ?"  
  
For a few seconds... no sound could be heard. And then she heard a sigh.  
  
"Abby..." It was him. How come she hadn't recognized him before ? The first voice had seemed too pleasant, too joyful... she was expecting to speak to a broken man, and this "hello" was oh so normal.  
  
"Abby... I called you before but you weren't there. I...uh...I don't know...if you got my message ?"  
  
"I did John..." Abby noticed he didn't sound that broken. He even sounded good.  
  
"Well...see, I'm back !"  
  
"When did you come back John ?"  
  
"Yesterday...I landed around 9pm." Again that information sounded wrong. He had gone to a meeting the morning right after his arrival ? Why was that ?  
  
"...I...I know I must have sounded weird on your answering machine, but it's just... that I didn't want to startle you by going there, to hurt you...But it was a stupid idea to call you and to pretend that you could have been there, wasn't it ?" Really, this voice was not at all broken and Abby felt both relieved and again, a little mad at him.  
  
"well.." Abby went on. "I could have gone to the meeting...One never knows !"  
  
"But you didn't ?"  
  
"No..no.. I didn't" Why ? why did she have to lie about it ?  
  
"Well...good for you ! It was the most boring meeting I ever attended !" John added with a definitely too blissful tone.  
  
Abby smiled at his answer. She knew who he was refering to. An uncomfortable silence followed. But she had to ask, she had to know.  
  
"John, why do you go to a NA meeting the morning right after being back ?"  
  
"...Abby...I, I don't know how..." Now his voice was breaking.   
  
She heard a deep breath, and then  
  
"not on the phone Abby, I want to talk to you, but not on the phone, please..."  
  
She couldn't believe it. He was begging her to listen to him, wasn't he ? He wanted to talk to her.   
  
"okay then...do you want to meet me at some place ? Do you want us to meet right away ?" Abby asked.  
  
"No, let's meet for lunch, what do you think ?"   
  
"Ok, I have a shift at 4pm though. We can have lunch around 12."  
  
"Ok" John said, with again a cheerful voice. He named a restaurant not far away from County and hung up.   
  
It was now 9:30am. And Abby couldn't decide whether she was going to slap his face or hug him when she would see him. She couldn't decide whether she was worried or relieved that he didn't sound that bad. Maybe she had understood it wrong.  
  
Of course the most plausible explanation was that he had taken something he shouldn't have in Africa and decided to come back right away to see people, to attend meetings, to talk about it with a therapist, and to get it out of his system as soon as possible.  
  
But it could also have been that he had simply come back, and wanted to see her and not knowing how to do that, had decided to check if he could find her at a meeting. This idea was ridiculous, Abby knew it. If it were the case, he wouldn't have called her in the first place and he wouldn't have been to St Michael. She didn't go there before.  
  
The more she tried to repeat in her head the few words that had come out of his mouth during the phone call, and the more she tried to analyze them, the more she was wondering whether he could have been on something. He was too cheerful. He must have taken something. No...he couldn't have... Not right after a meeting. No way. Maybe it was just because she had expected him to be frantic and broken...and he wasn't. He was just...normal.  
  
But again, why was it that he hadn't wanted to see her right away ? Why waiting for lunch ? Did he have something to do, something to hide ? The wall of thoughts that she had built up over the last ten weeks to make him go away of her life was now definitely destroyed. He had entered her unbreakable castle like a hurricane. No...like a tiny cold breeze, whistling through her window. He had just showed his back, said a few words, and the walls had collapsed...  
  
To be continued... 


	3. And the breeze will cease to be abreathi...

Category: Carby  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Spoilers: takes place after 10.2 "The lost"...but no accurate   
spoilers for episodes after that. Just my imagination.  
  
Previously...: Carter is back from Africa and Abby spots him at an AA meeting. He tells her on the phone that he did something stupid, and she asks to meet him.  
  
---------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
Chapter 3  
  
And the breeze will cease to be a-breathing  
  
-------------------------------------------  
  
Abby arrived in front of the restaurant at 11:40am. She wanted to be early. She wanted to be there before him. She waited 25 minutes outside. But Carter didn't show up. And it was not in his habits to be late... Again, she was scared, really scared. She should have insisted on meeting him right away. A few hours could be an awfully long time for someone in his situation. She still didn't know what his situation actually was, but she knew it couldn't be good.  
  
Without really believing he could be in here, she entered the restaurant only to check whether he could have left a message.  
  
And there he was. At a booth right in front of the entrance. Same blue T-shirt as in the morning. Longer hair than usual. A short beard. And he was thinner than before, a lot thinner. Even with the beard, his jaw line was much more pronounced than it used to be. He saw her right away, and a large grin enlightened his face. She noticed he was tanned too. He looked good, aside from his obvious weight loss, he looked really good.  
  
Abby smiled back, walked straight to his booth and sat in front of him.   
  
"you're late" he started, with the same large smile on his face.  
  
"No I'm not, I just didn't expect you to be that early. I was waiting for you outside."  
  
"Really ? I thought I told you I would wait inside..."  
  
"I didn't get this part I think" Abby went on  
  
"Yeah... you seemed strange on the phone" Carter replied "are you okay ?"  
  
Abby laughed. He was the one asking her if she was okay. Since she had seen him that morning at the meeting, she hadn't stopped worrying for him. And yet he looked fine, and he was the one worrying for her. It was just like before. She was the broken one, and he was the one helping her. It was that situation that she had hated in their relationship. Of course she wanted him to be here for her, but she couldn't stand his staring at her as though she was going to break down any time. He was doing it again. And she was beginning to be mad at him again.  
  
"John it's not about me anymore..." she knew she sounded rather agressive, and that's how she had meant to sound.  
  
"Why did you leave, why did you stay that long in the Congo ?" she went on "Was it because you were okay here in Chicago ?"  
  
"Maybe a more accurate question would be "why did I come back ?" then..." The grin on his face had faded. He was looking straight into her eyes, and this time, Abby didn't see his usual look of concern that she had loved at the beginning of their relationship and had finally learned to hate... His eyes were just pleading, asking her whether he might go on, whether she was ready to listen to him.  
  
"John, did you relapse ?" Abby's voice was now sweet and full of concern.   
  
Instantly, his eyes showed relief. He was slightly smiling. She had gotten into him, he didn't have to tell her. She knew. And yet he was aware that he had to go on, to give her details. She had come to him when he needed her, he owed her a more precise explanation. For long seconds, he looked away through the window. In a whisper, he said  
  
"I injected 1mg of morphin...well not even that..."  
  
Abby didn't know whether she had to be relieved or totally bewildered. So it was morphin...that bad. But 1mg was really nothing she thought. Not even good enough to sweep away a slight headache.  
  
"... I put 5mg in the syringe but I didn't push it all" Carter went on.  
  
"Why ?"  
  
"why ? because I couldn't...because I felt... disgusted !"  
  
"No I mean, why did you shot morphin in the first place ?" Abby didn't realize she was almost shouting.  
  
Carter looked at her in disbelief.   
  
"Abby...I thought you knew better" Carter was only whispering, his voice nearly broken, defeated. "Did I ever ask you why you drunk tequila one evening ?"  
  
His eyes were now wet but were yet challenging hers. He thought she knew... but she didn't. She knew why she did drink, she knew what and how she wanted to forget, she knew the warm feeling of alcohol down her throat. But she didn't know how a man could be willing to stick a needle in his own veins. The idea sounded so repulsive. No, that was one thing about him that she didn't know.  
  
"So it went into your system ?" She still wanted to believe it was a false relapse, like the vicodin incident some years ago...  
  
"Yes Abby... it went into my system...There's no way you can throw up morphin you just shot !" he said almost laughing.  
  
"When was that ?"  
  
"Yesterday morning. Congo time I mean... Good thing I was in Kinshasa. I managed to find a flight right away to Paris and then to Chicago."   
  
"You just decided to come back right away ?" Abby asked.  
  
"Yeah...what else would you have done ? I don't think I could have found any narcotics receptor blocker in Africa...and it was too late anyway..."  
  
Abby was studying his face. He didn't look bad. Tired, sure, but that was to be expected with the jet lag. Thin, very thin, but he had just spent ten weeks in a developing country, with most probably an unhuman pace of work. His hands weren't shaking, he had no obvious signs of withdrawals.  
  
"And how do you feel now ?"   
  
"I think I'm fine, considering... I threw up five times in the plane, but I think it's mainly because I felt disgusted by what I did. I don't think it was...you know... It can't have that effect, not only 1mg. What do you think ?"  
  
"I have no idea John, I'm not the specialist for that matter."   
  
He looked hurt. And she knew she had just put the finger on one of the big issues in their relationship. They both thought they knew, what the other one felt, what the other one went through, because they both thought it was the same problem. But it wasn't.   
  
"So, what comes next ?" Abby asked.  
  
"At least two meetings a day for one or two weeks, and I made appointments with my therapist, already one this afternoon and another one in two days. Maybe I'll consider seeing a doctor to have a prescription for an opiate receptor blocker. I'm not sure yet. I'll certainly do it if I go back to work"  
  
"At County ?" Abby interrupted  
  
"Yes. I'm considering going back there. This place grows on you, you know ?"  
  
Abby laughed. "I guess everybody will be thrilled to have you back"  
  
"everbody ? even you Abby ?" now his eyes weren't challenging or pleading. They just expressed confusion, embarrassment. Without letting her time to respond, he went on "I know I should feel terrible. Abby, I'm sorry...I really am. I left like I was running away from you. Well... maybe it wasn't really about the way I left. I went back because of Luka and I'm happy I did. Really, I'm the happiest man on earth because I did that. When I look back at it in a few years, that will be the one thing that I will be proud of, at least one thing in my life that I did right. But the way I stayed in the Congo, the way I just wrote you a break up letter, that was wrong. I felt good over there, I felt like I was someone important, someone who could make a difference. And nobody was asking me where I came from, what my life was like before that... So I felt free, I felt very light. But I also felt so empty..."  
  
"One can't get away from his personal background John..." Abby said.  
  
"Abby, I don't know if it's what I tried to do there. I just know that I was happy. And yet I relapsed. It came out of nothing, I still can't see any reason for it. And I know I should feel terrible. But I feel happy that I'm back." His smile was large and Abby couldn't help but think that he looked like a young kid. He had changed physically over these past ten weeks, had grown a beard and lost some weight, and yet he looked younger.  
  
He looked like a small child who had just done something wrong, been yelled at by his parents because of it, had cried and then gone back to his mother's arms to have her hug him and tell him that everything was going to be all right.  
  
Abby remembered that when she was a child and during the rare phases where her mother was okay, and could be seen as a real mother, it would always happen this way. Abby would bother her baby brother, have him cry, and then their mom would come and without really yelling, would tell her how wrong what she did was, so wrong that Abby would finally cry. Her mother would then leave her a few minutes alone in her room, to swallow her childish remorse and guilt. And then she would come back, take her face so gently in her hands, and very softly blow a small breathing on her cheeks and eyes, to dry her tears out. And with the sweetest voice on earth you could imagine, she would tell her "I'm blowing a magic breathing on you Abby, to make all sorrows go away, and leave you with nothing but joy".   
  
Abby was taken away from these sweet memories when she realized that Carter wasn't smiling anymore. A dark curtain seemed to have fallen over his face.  
  
"John, you can talk to me... It's not only about being happy to be back is it ?"  
  
"The point is... I don't know how I feel, and it scares me. That's why I want to see my therapist as soon as possible. I want my feelings to clarify, to get rid of this haziness."  
  
"The same guy you saw after Atlanta ?" Abby asked.  
  
"Yeah...there's no point seeing someone new who's going to ask me about the whole story of my life again. Spare me that please !" he added with again a large grin.  
  
"When was the last time you saw him ?" Abby asked.  
  
"Well... I kept seeing him on a regular basis until June 2001, and then I went once in a while... and the last time was February 2002."  
  
"Wow...that's quite a long time ago ! Do you think he's going to recognize you ?" Abby added.  
  
John laughed out. "What do you mean ? That I need a shave ?"  
  
"Yeah...maybe you could consider it...and an haircut won't hurt too !"   
  
John was now really laughing, and Abby knew that seeing him happy was the sweetest feeling she had in a real long time. But again, his face darkened.  
  
"I am sure I was happy to be in the Congo, and I'm glad to be back, but I shouldn't feel this way, should I ? I mean... I just relapsed. And that means a lot of trouble ahead. That means maybe that I'll never get over it and I shouldn't consider being a doctor anymore. That means I can't get away from it even when I have a job miles away from here, miles away from where it all started. It means it's stuck on me like scars that will never disappear." Carter was now whispering.  
  
"It means that you're only human John." Abby answered.  
  
His now teary eyes were stuck into hers, and she could read relief and trust in them. His lips slowly drew a slight smile, and then got into a large grin. And Abby realized she was the cause for this change. She had the power to make him smile, even when it seemed that his life was going on the dark side of the road again. And she felt like she could be like a mother to him, the one who would blow a sweet breeze to his face to dry out the tears and make the pain go away. She felt she could be the magic breathing on him, that would make all sorrows go away and leave him with nothing but joy.  
  
To be continued... 


End file.
